Zoom The usual suspects at the sharp end of the grid

After Felipe Massa looked so strong in Friday practice, it was a turn-around in qualification for the Belgian Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton claimed his fifth pole position of the season from Massa and Heikki Kovalainen. Here's what the fastest three had to say.

Q: Lewis, I guess the smile on your face says it all with the pleasure and the perfection of your pole lap.
Lewis HAMILTON: Today has been a great day for me. I was so happy with all three laps I did throughout qualifying. It is always satisfying when you can go out, do one lap and come back in and watch everyone else going around trying to get their laps done. Today the team made no mistakes and I made no mistakes. I had four great laps but especially at the end. In my first Q3 lap I had a bit of a lock up at turn one and I had the same for my second Q3 lap but somehow managed to keep it together but the rest of the lap I was very happy with.

Q: And not an easy weekend so far with changing conditions. In Q2 we saw you running with the harder of the Bridgestone tyres compared to your team mate, so a lot of indecision going into qualifying.
LH: Not on our side. I decided to stay with the harder tyre for Q2 and surprisingly the option tyre, the softer tyre, is quite a bit better. I think everyone else was on the option tyre but I was on the prime and I was very, very comfortable with the pace that I had, considering I was on that tyre.

Q: You mentioned the lock up. That is not the first time we have seen you locking up. Is that something we should be talking about?
LH: Not really. It is one of the characteristics of my car and that's why we are quick, maybe, I don't know. But even with those lock ups we still managed to pull it out of the bag. I feel great. The team and the atmosphere in the team feels great, back at the factory but also here and really the solid job that they are doing is coming out in the results that we have, so I am absolutely thrilled to be here.

Q: Felipe, it will be a very tight first corner going into the Belgium Grand Prix.
Felipe MASSA: To be honest, I did a great lap, I did almost a perfect lap but it was not enough. Sometimes you do a great lap and you are still missing something. On the qualifying these guys showed definitely a better performance than us and we need to understand why. I think yesterday we had a great car. I did a great job in qualifying but it was not enough.